Written by: Editorial2 min readSep 3, 2026 09:44 PM IST First published on: Sep 3, 2026 at 09:43 PM ISTGloria Steinem spoke often about wanting to live to 100. “There is so much to do,” she once explained in an interview. The prolific writer, one of the best-known faces of the women’s liberation movement, died this week at 92 — a few years short of the century she had aspired to. A tireless journalist, activist, political organiser and speaker, Steinem lived for long stretches of time out of a suitcase because there were always so many ideas to be inspired by and lives to be changed.Some of her restlessness owed to her fear of having missed out on important experiences when, from the age of 10 to 17, she was forced to “mother” her mentally ill mother. Then there was the doctor in the UK who performed an abortion — then an illegal procedure in much of the world — on a 22-year-old Steinem on two conditions: That she never reveal his name and that she do with her life exactly as she pleased. She would spend the next seven decades living up to the second — she broke the first after the doctor’s death when she dedicated her memoir to him. Steinem battled long and hard alongside other stalwarts of the movement like Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan, to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), advocated for reproductive freedom, raised awareness about violence against women and co-founded a magazine, Ms, run and staffed entirely by women.AdvertisementAlso Read | There’s a new solution for India’s population problem – SIRThe ERA was never passed, the victory of Roe v Wade was reversed, and violence against women remains pervasive. None of this is Steinem’s failure, nor of the movement she led. All it shows is how much more there is still to do.